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jsducote
·This is just like an episode of CSI: ENHANCE AND ZOOM IN!
Debunking the Faux-Patina Myth : radium/tritium vintage watches had colored lume since new
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JwRosenthal
·This is just like an episode of CSI: ENHANCE AND ZOOM IN!
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jsducote
·If I just align the horizontal pixel array with the luminosity grid with a high-pass filter of ISO64000 it'll be clear as day.
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Travelller
·more like green to me. we have also handled many 1680s as well as vintage speedmasters where the lume was white as can be. I don't think they left the factory any other way and if anyone thinks so from photographs I would suspect lighting to blame.
While there was no Adobe RGB colorspace back then to use in the darkrooms, they did pretty well with gray cards. However, journalistic photographers weren't running around shoving gray cards in the faces of the Astronauts... 😉
Anyone older than about 40 who had an interest in mechanical watches as a teen or younger adult could have seen new tritium lume first hand. I know I did. Obviously those 50+ are even more likely. I can confirm that such lume was never to my recollection milky white, it was generally off white, slightly yellow or occasionally very pale green. Pure white lume like BGW9 is a relatively recent thing. The darker yellow/orange shades came later with deterioration but there was always a hint of colour IMO. It’s not like we are debating the colour of Tutankhamen’s eyes, plenty will have seen new tritium first hand.
One aspect not covered so far in this debate is the fact that some lume colors are achieved by mixing pure SuperLuminova with non-photoluminescent pigments (paint) and therefore decreasing the output. Here's a chart for the "standard" Superluminova color-set but this does not include manufactures that play around with additional pigments to achieve a desired color.
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JwRosenthal
·Re. photographs - could be the case however there's also the real possibility that these photos were printed on photographic paper and at some later point in time, digitally scanned. How they were stored would affect the retention of color (and this is not "the" physical copy the Declaration of Independence...). EDIT - ditto for negatives and slides.
While there was no Adobe RGB colorspace back then to use in the darkrooms, they did pretty well with gray cards. However, journalistic photographers weren't running around shoving gray cards in the faces of the Astronauts... 😉
Okay, I can work with that. I distinctly recall a slight green tinge... HOWEVER... let's not forget that the moment you walk into a shaded area, the tritium, which is active 24/7, will have a colorcast matching the actual active lume color - which I'm pretty certain was always green...
One aspect not covered so far in this debate is the fact that some lume colors are achieved by mixing pure SuperLuminova with non-photoluminescent pigments (paint) and therefore decreasing the output. Here's a chart for the "standard" Superluminova color-set but this does not include manufactures that play around with additional pigments to achieve a desired color.
Also, your chart on lume color is a good example of how colors can be manipulated and lest we forget that one batch may vary from another depending on formula.
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eugeneandresson
·Re. photographs - could be the case however there's also the real possibility that these photos were printed on photographic paper and at some later point in time, digitally scanned. How they were stored would affect the retention of color (and this is not "the" physical copy the Declaration of Independence...). EDIT - ditto for negatives and slides.
While there was no Adobe RGB colorspace back then to use in the darkrooms, they did pretty well with gray cards. However, journalistic photographers weren't running around shoving gray cards in the faces of the Astronauts... 😉
Okay, I can work with that. I distinctly recall a slight green tinge... HOWEVER... let's not forget that the moment you walk into a shaded area, the tritium, which is active 24/7, will have a colorcast matching the actual active lume color - which I'm pretty certain was always green...
One aspect not covered so far in this debate is the fact that some lume colors are achieved by mixing pure SuperLuminova with non-photoluminescent pigments (paint) and therefore decreasing the output. Here's a chart for the "standard" Superluminova color-set but this does not include manufactures that play around with additional pigments to achieve a desired color.
Great post, thank you very much!
The biggest control element that most (who are bringing opinion/feeling as opposed to proof 🙄 to the table) seem to have missed is the following point I specifically mentioned in my OP ... perhaps I should bold/underline it :
...using the white hand and dial text as a reference for white...
No matter how these images were stored, if their color was affected by age it would affect the color of the entire image, not just certain parts of it (like the lume plots). The hands ARE white in all the Nasa images, as they are white on all of our watches...and the plots are not the same color as the hands. That color (the white of the hands) in an image could easily be use to adjust any color tints that may have arison (or the whites of their eyes etc)...a simple one-click-trick I use when looking at poor photographs from shitty cameras on eBay or here, for example.
Then there is the case of the Ultraman images which are better zoomed in...while slightly different coloring no doubt as a result of the TV, again, looking at the hands (and the tritium encased in them) shows the same off-white/creamy lume with respect to the none 'white' lume parts.
Then there is the bond watch. Gilt dial with beautiful green radium. There are elements of white of the light source reflecting off the case (and in the crystal there is a flare of the reflected light source which looks blown ... but if it were color affected due to age relating to storage media etc that would show the color, in crystal flare, or the case one could correct with).
PS: yes, that color chart looks familiar. Here is one (shades of white) which I think with a closer resemblance (but still missing the lovely faux-patina colour found on all the 90's speedmasters...
Edit : holy cow ... when I look at the above picture on my pc monitor (at work) the shades are almost hardly indistinguishable from each other (and white) ...the top row is almost gone completely... however, at home (with my very nice Eizo monitor) each square pops cleanly and clearly and and each hue is plain to see. It seems half the problem the judges (you folk) will have with judging color in this entire post will be the monitors you use, which are most likely not rendering color correctly...
Edited:
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wsfarrell
·What people seem to be missing here is that lume color in faux-patina watches isn't chosen because it's nice, it's chosen because it's reminiscent of vintage watches with aged patina. Omega doesn't say that specifically about the Speedmaster 321, though Hodinkee alludes to it: "Omega has also opted for beige lume, which ought to keep the fires of the fauxtina controversy fanned nicely." Many other makers are quite open about this. Some examples:
From Longines: "To reproduce the original timekeeper’s patina, the dial on the military watch has been hand sprayed with tiny black droplets"
From NTH: "designed to emulate the weathered good looks of a well-traveled vintage piece"
From Blancpain: "old radium type lume"
From Hamilton: "Triangular indexes with old radium color Super-LumiNova"
From Steinhart: "Old Radium, Vintage"
From Squale: "vintage colored treated hands and hour markers"
The intent of the manufacturer apparently doesn't matter to many on this forum: "Hey, all lume is colored, and I just happen to like this creamy beige color." I like that color too, and have a number of vintage watches with it--watches that were designed to look good, not aged.
From Longines: "To reproduce the original timekeeper’s patina, the dial on the military watch has been hand sprayed with tiny black droplets"
From NTH: "designed to emulate the weathered good looks of a well-traveled vintage piece"
From Blancpain: "old radium type lume"
From Hamilton: "Triangular indexes with old radium color Super-LumiNova"
From Steinhart: "Old Radium, Vintage"
From Squale: "vintage colored treated hands and hour markers"
The intent of the manufacturer apparently doesn't matter to many on this forum: "Hey, all lume is colored, and I just happen to like this creamy beige color." I like that color too, and have a number of vintage watches with it--watches that were designed to look good, not aged.
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Wryfox
·Communist propoganda!
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Travelller
·...The hands ARE white in all the Nasa images, as they are white on all of our watches...and the plots are not the same color as the hands... Edit : holy cow ... when I look at the above picture on my pc monitor (at work) the shades are almost hardly indistinguishable from each other (and white) ...the top row is almost gone completely...
Not even white SuperLuminova is "white"...
/Off-Topic
I also use an Eizo Wide gamut monitor; I chose it when I was still printing photos and I wanted to save time (& expensive paper). Now that I pretty much only store photos online, the monitor is turning out to be a hindrance because 99% of people will view the photos on sRGB monitors that are most likely un-calibrated and using non-color-fidelity panel technologies, etc.
So although I still do my work on the Eizo, I proof the final image on my Notebook's glossy panel and adjust as necessary (saving the results as a separate copy)
What people seem to be missing here is that lume color in faux-patina watches isn't chosen because it's nice, it's chosen because it's reminiscent of vintage watches with aged patina...
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Archer
··Omega Qualified WatchmakerThe intent of the manufacturer apparently doesn't matter to many on this forum: "Hey, all lume is colored, and I just happen to like this creamy beige color." I like that color too, and have a number of vintage watches with it--watches that were designed to look good, not aged.
So you like it, but your moral outrage keeps you from buying it then?
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Caliber561
·
Zinc Sulfide tends to have a bit of a green-yellow hue. I think it makes sense that these watches exhibited such a color on their lume when first made, as shown in the advert above. Both the lume plots of the 105.012 and the Mark II exhibit the characteristic yellow hue that many of us have come to love. It's also worth noting that the hands and dial text are distinctly white in comparison, so even if the advert is color-shifted, we can still tell what the original colors were.
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padders
··Oooo subtitles!An excellent demonstration showing that tritium lume lume was never snowy white. That said, what's with the caption lol
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eugeneandresson
·To me the white of the hands look blue-y...and as such, the yellow lume looks green-y...
Here the white-correction...
Here the white-correction...
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Lurk41
·Same here. It looks better with the correction!
What amazes me is the dial and bezel colors...
Both dials are blue-ish while the bezel on the moonwatch looks slightly brown-ish. Today, it is mostly the other way around: warm dial and cold bezel 😀
What amazes me is the dial and bezel colors...
Both dials are blue-ish while the bezel on the moonwatch looks slightly brown-ish. Today, it is mostly the other way around: warm dial and cold bezel 😀
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Travelller
·Oh wow, my Speedmaster's lume isn't white... 😁
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Travelller
·...The hands ARE white in all the Nasa images, as they are white on all of our watches...and the plots are not the same color as the hands...
As noted elsewhere, I accept your theory that Tritium may differ from the flat-white painted hands of a Speedmaster and even more so in shaded areas / indoors. My opinion is that if anything, it would have been closer to green than say, cream-colored. 👍 ...
Ok, so this is what the Moonwatch-Only lads have to say ... 📖
So, that's that, then... 😁
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eugeneandresson
·Thank you for further validating exactly what I have stated/shown based on someone else's opinion, no doubt formed in the same way 👍 However, 'on the first tritium dials, the markers were ivory colored with a greenish tinge or pale yellow from the 1970s to the 1990s, according to production period' could be left open to interpretation if people ignore the bold bit...it is clear there are no green lume dials in the 60s, early 70s or late 80s or 90s. If you want to take the MWO statement as gospel though, there are still a few holes...like the 60s...and the color of early radium dials (shown in Walter Schirra's pics..and also it is clear that the 90s were not ivory colored, but rather what people today would call 'faux'. And, worth mentioning, this is just speedmasters. I am fairly certain the same dialmakers used the same lume on other manufacturers dials...
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padders
··Oooo subtitles!The thing is Eugene the faux thing isn't totally a myth. Radium lume wasn’t toffee coloured when new, it got darker as the material decayed and on earlier models inc the SM300 MC and Trilogy pieces Omega copied this darker colour so there are grounds for criticism. Where you and I agree (and clearly others don’t) is that tritium lume wasn’t pure white to start with so it is IMO justifiable to recreate the shade on a modern piece. Heck SL lume has only very recently been available as full power pure white lume, the stuff used previously was either tinted or if pure white had a lesser glow.
it’s not a clear picture. It could be argued that if Omega has really wished to recreate the Ed White accurately they should have mismatched the hands and dial and applied the lume in a wobbly fashion!
it’s not a clear picture. It could be argued that if Omega has really wished to recreate the Ed White accurately they should have mismatched the hands and dial and applied the lume in a wobbly fashion!
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eugeneandresson
·The thing is Eugene the faux thing isn't totally a myth. Radium lume wasn’t toffee coloured when new, it got darker as the material decayed and on earlier models inc the SM300 MC and Trilogy pieces Omega copied this darker colour so there are grounds for criticism.
I don't believe I ever said otherwise...and I believe my OP is clear.
